Negative Spaces
by SavvyIthny
Summary: Just because its over doesn't mean you're not damaged.  And tough guys feel the losses, too.  Sometimes it takes someone new to see what's wrong.    Sam, Quinn, Puck.  Minor Spoilers through Duets.  Rated T for angry, but not sexual language.


**Title:** Negative Spaces  
**Word Count:** 4,037  
**Rating:** PG13 for language  
**Character(s):** Sam, Quinn, Puck. Cameos from the rest of the club.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Easier to ask forgiveness than get permission.  
**Author's Notes:** Written for this prompt on the Glee_Angst_Meme: .com/glee_angst_?thread=4698361#t4698361 (Don't read before the story if you don't like spoilers). More notes at end.  
**Summary: **Just because its over doesn't mean you're not damaged. And tough guys feel the losses, too.

* * *

Puck is being an asshole.

The whole Glee club knows it. Not just being a regular asshole – certain members could argue ad infinitum that he was _always_ an asshole – but being a _colossal_ asshole. Rising to new heights of assholery.

Telling Finn he was pussywhipped for agreeing to work on a Shawn Colvin song for Sectionals? Asshole.

Mooing audibly when Mercedes had trouble replicating a high-kick move the other girls added to the choreography? Asshole.

Stealing Kurt's dress shirt out of his locker during first-period gym, forcing him to spend the rest of the day wearing his Cheerios top over his pale blue plaid capris? Asshole.

Giving that freshman back her bra in the hall, in front of Quinn, with a "Hey babe, left this in my car at lunch?" Asshole.

Getting himself locked up for who knows how long, with 8 weeks left to Sectionals and the Glee Club still one member too small to compete?

Yeah. Puck is being an ass.

But even knowing that Puck is pushing every single limit even his friends have tried to set for him, they're surprised at what happens the first day after he comes back to school.

Rehearsal starts out normally. Everyone is in the choir room, waiting for Mr. Schue to get out of a teacher's conference. Finn and Artie are messing around with their instruments, throwing bits of "Paradise City" back and forth and making cheap shots about possible hairography to match. Brittany and Santana are comparing notes with Mike about plans for the bus ride to the next away game, and Mercedes, and Kurt are listening to Quinn as she pulls a manila envelope from her backpack.

"Cedes, check this out," Quinn says, opening the package. "Ms. Corcoran sent me more pictures. It's her 6-month portraits." She hands Mercedes a photograph. Mercedes coos at it, Kurt claps a hand dramatically to his chest as if in awe, and Tina comes over to see it too.

"She's been really good about sending stuff," Quinn continues. "I mean, she agreed we could be open with letters and stuff, but that's not actually legally enforceable or anything, so she doesn't really have to. And I can send her stuff, and she takes pictures of Beth with it. It kind of makes me feel like – like there's still a connection there." The kids around her nod along with her.

"Look at this," she adds after a moment. "This is so cool!"

She reaches back into the envelope and pulls out a flat disk enveloped in bubble wrap. She unwinds it to reveal a circle of plaster, the kind the kids all recognize from a Mother's Day project in Kindergarten. A tiny handprint is pressed into the middle of it, and on the back a strong script says "Beth. 8/18/10" in dark black marker.

"It's so tiny," Mercedes murmurs, holding her own hand over it in comparison.

And then, suddenly, Puck gets up from where he's been sitting alone at the back of the room, so fast that he knocks his chair over. He strides down the risers and grabs the plaster print.

"It's _bullshit_." He growls, pointed at the token in his hand. "It's not her fucking hand. It's an empty space where her hand used to be. It's NOTHING!"

With a flick of his wrist he hurls the disk against the wall behind Finn and Artie, and it shatters into tiny white fragments. And then he turns and flees.

The room is utterly silent as he leaves. Because they all knew Puck was being an asshole. But this? Is scary.

The silence holds for a long moment, then disappears in a hail of "What the FUCK?" "What the hell was that?" "It's like he _wants_ us all to hate him!" and a keening shriek of "what is his DAMAGE?" from Quinn.

Kurt and Tina start trying to pick up shards of plaster, gathering the largest pieces together as though enough might be left to piece together, while Mercedes rocks a weeping Quinn against her shoulder. Santana is staring at the door through which Puck exited, clenching and releasing her fists in rage.

Mr. Schuester comes in on this scene, looking bewildered.

"Guys, where's Puck running to?" he asks. I thought he'd be here for practice since it's his first full day back?"

Kurt shrugs. "Maybe he needs to give Becky a patriotic wedgie?" he snaps.

"Or kick someone's puppy?" Rachel adds.

"Or track dog crap on Miss Pillsbury's carpet!" Tina calls out.

Class erupts again as everyone interjects their own ideas.

"His pee balloons sprang a leak?"

"Somewhere, there's a portapotty that needs tipping?"

"They just cleaned the cafeteria fridge into the dumpster and he wants to toss in some freshmen while it's full?"

Finn's voice sounds over them all. "It's like he's got some stupid need to prove he's still a badass even though he hangs out with us."

Multiple heads nodded at this. Rachel added, "He's probably embarrassed to be seen with us. We wreck his cred."

Artie joins this. "Well, if we're not good enough for him, maybe he's not good enough for us either." This earns a round of fist-bumps from the kids beside him.

Schuester cuts in. "Okay, okay. That's enough. Guys, whatever is going on with Puck, we're going to have to talk about it later. Right now we've got to get rehearsing. Finn, Rachel? Want to take Verse 1 from the top?"

XOXOXOXOXOX

Sam stays out of the whole thing; he's far too new to this group, doesn't yet understand its dynamics. He holds Quinn's hand as they walk to next period, but doesn't say a lot. She hasn't yet talked about Beth to him very much, other than generalities, and he's not sure what's safe to say. So he sticks with vaguely supportive responses and tries not to make them in Na'vi.

What with all this, he's late for gym, running into the locker room to change into his shorts just as the teacher blows the whistle and the rest of the class runs to line up under the basketball hoop and count off teams. He's rushing to join them, throwing his jeans in the locker, when he's startled by another metal door slamming in the next row.

He pokes his head around as he pulls on his gym shirt. Puck is sitting on the bench, head in his hands. As Sam watches, Puck lashes out with his foot and kicks the locker door again, hard. It slams shut and bounces open, and he kicks it again. And again. And again.

"Hey," Sam says, hesitantly. "I think it's dead."

Puck jumps up, and for a minute Sam thinks the other boy is coming at him to tackle him. If the idea occurs to Puck, though, it passes quickly. Instead, he sneers. "Fuck this shit. I don't NEED this. FUCK this goddamned _shithole_ full of FUCKING losers." He reaches out one last time, slamming the locker shut with his hand this time. It stays closed, and Puck stamps out the door that leads out onto the playing fields.

Sam lets out a long breath, relieved that the blowup hadn't been directed at him. And then he notices something on the floor, dropped when Puck took the last swipe at the locker. Walking over to it he picks it up, curiously.

It's a tiny pink hat, knitted from soft cotton. A few sticky dark marks dot the inside of the ribbing, and it's wrinkled and pocked with bits of pocket lint. Sam has seen something like it before, though. And now, he thinks he maybe knows what, to use Quinn's phrase, Noah Puckerman's "Damage" is.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Puck doesn't show at all for Glee the next day. No one is surprised.

"Probably being treated for testosterone overdose," Kurt jokes.

"Screwing one of the gymnasts in the weight room?" offers Tina.

"The weight room's busy right now," Brittany informs them. "He'd be in the walk-in pantry in the Home Ec room instead."

Sam fidgets. He figures that even if the guy is normally a bit of a jerk, he's got his _reasons_ this time, and these are the people who, of everyone in the school, should be able to give him some slack. Because they should really have more of a clue.

"Well," says Rachel, somewhat primly, "If he's decided he's too cool for all of us, I'm not going to stop him from leaving. I'm sure finding a new twelfth member will be far more easy than troubleshooting his teenage crisis."

Sam can't help himself. "No, it won't be easier," he blurts out. "His teenage crisis is staring you all in the face and you sit around ignoring it."

He fishes the little pink hat out of his pocket, where he'd put it, intending to return it to Puck if he showed up today. He holds the small token up to the rest of the group.

"The guy made a baby. He watched her be born and held her and then he signed the papers to make her someone else's. Somewhere in this world is a little person who came from him. I think that's a pretty big reason to freak out, actually."

Quinn is staring at him warily. "He never said anything," she whispers. "He _wanted_ to do it. He said it was for the best."

"Yeah," says Sam. "He might have said that. But it doesn't mean the dude isn't messed up by it."

Quinn protests, "I'm the one who was pregnant. I'm the one who carried her in me and then handed her over. And you don't see me freaking the hell out and breaking things and doing stupid shit."

"Yeah. Well, didn't you say you got special counseling all summer?" he counters. "And you've got people giving you church awards for giving speeches about what you did. And you've got a box of pictures of her, and letters telling you how great it's working. Dude's got exactly this." He hands the hat to Quinn and sits down, looking away from her as he crosses his arms over his chest. He suspects this may be the end of their developing relationship, but he's kind of tired of everyone picking on someone who isn't even here, and is so obviously hurting.

"He … he didn't ask about the letters…" Quinn muttered.

"Well, he's got that one picture you gave him - from the first set Ms. Corcoran sent? It's next to his bed." Santana admits.

"He's got a photocopy of that footprint sheet from the hospital in his wallet behind his driver's license." Mike confirms.

The kids look at each other sheepishly as they begin reinterpreting everything they've seen, everything they've assumed, for the last few months. It isn't easy to reframe what they thought they knew.

"Has anyone seen him today?" Quinn asks quietly. The others murmur their negatives. She wads the tiny hat in her hand, kneading it like a ball of dough, spreading it out and folding it over and over, and then fitting it over her balled up fist as though filling it out in some semblance of being worn would bring her some kind of answer.

She stands up abruptly. "I've got to go now."

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Puck isn't home. His mom reports that he didn't come home last night, adding that that's par for Puck's course over the last month.

Sam hears this from Quinn, who calls him, bordering on hysteria, to yell "You're on the team, where the fuck is he?" and "Finn doesn't know shit, he's been hanging with Berry every night for the last month," and "Mike told me to check behind the dugout but he's not there either!"

Sam guesses this means she hasn't broken up with him over his outburst in the choir room.

"Quinn, I barely know the guy," he tries, but she's already telling him to meet her in the school parking lot after practice is over and he's realizing that when she uses that voice there's no way he can turn her down, and somehow he's riding shotgun in his new girlfriend's car while she drives in circles around town, looking for the father of her baby. This is the kind of thing his friends at his old school told him he'd be doing in a small town in Nowhere, Ohio. He'd laughed and made some joke about Maury Povitch and DNA tests. None of it is funny anymore.

Quinn is sniffling, alternating sobs and muttered curses, and he reaches over the shoebox she has balanced on the center console to pat her knee.

They drive by the river park several times before Quinn spots the old pickup parked under the trees by the footbridge. She pulls over next to it and gets out.

"I'll wait here," Sam offers. This is _so_ not his business.

"Don't be an idiot," she hisses. "Help me look for him."

They don't have to look far. Puck is sitting on a picnic table near the water. He's doggedly gouging a hole into the table beside him with a jackknife. He doesn't look up when Quinn approaches, and Sam lags behind, feeling awkward.

But Puck addresses him, not Quinn. "She's already got you running her errands, man?" His voice rises, mockingly, "Oh, sweetie? Could you hunt down my ex?" He drops his pitch again, rough and vaguely threatening. " You here to go all shiny white knight, kick my ass in her defense? Take me down for being such a pathetic loser?"

Sam freezes. This has crossed a line, now, from pathetic to frankly scary. He watches warily as Puck lifts the knife blade, turning it in front of his face, staring at it intently for several moments before he scowls back at Sam.

Sam's heart sinks. The knife is streaked with blood. Puck notices his eyes widening and snorts a mirthless laugh.

"Don't worry, I'm already on it."

"Puck," Quinn cuts in, her voice quavering, "What have you done?"

Puck stabs the knife back into the table next to him. "Nothing. Nothing! I! Haven't! Done! _SHIT_!" He emphasizes each word with another stab. Quinn begins to sob openly.

"Puck? You're scaring me!"

"I haven't done SHIT!" he repeats. "I'm such a fucking badass? Can't even do _this_ right!" He holds up his arm to reveal a cut across it – a shallow, stuttering cut that is only dribbling blood in a slow parade of droplets.

"Can't do this right. Couldn't be a father right. I've fucked everything the hell up, and I can't fucking FIX it." He hurls the knife away from him into a nearby bush with a sob."

Quinn takes another step forward, and then another. She lays a hand on his shaking shoulder.

"Is this about Beth?" she asks.

He nods, and turns to bury his face in the hair hanging over her shoulder. His voice, when he speaks, is suddenly quiet.

"I always told myself that when I was a dad I was going to be a damn good one. I told my sister, 'you wait, I'm _not_ gonna be like him. My kids aren't gonna grow up like us.' And then I just sat there and _watched_ while they took her away, and went out and fucking partied afterwards 'cause I was free."

Quinn gestures at Sam over Puck's back. Sam has been torn between wanting to get the hell out of there and needing to stay to make sure Quinn doesn't get hurt. She mouths something at him, something it takes him three tries to understand.

"_Get the box."_

The box. The box she left in the car. He can do that. That's a good job. He'll go do that.

By the time he gets back, Quinn is rubbing slow circles on Puck's back, and she's got that little pink hat out, spread out again around her fist like it's being worn.

"I know where you got this," she's saying. "It's the hat they put on her in the hospital right after she was born. It was all gunky inside because they didn't get all the blood out of her hair before they put it on, so my mom made me leave it in the bassinette when we checked out." She rotates it slowly on her hand, until Puck lifts it off and spreads it on his knee.

"You took all the other stuff," Puck replies. "That lady from the adoption agency made you that special memory box, right? With the footprints and pictures and her blanket. I figured this was okay for me to have. And . . . it smells like her. Well, it used to. It mostly smells like my pocket now."

Sam is now standing several paces behind them, holding the box up so Quinn can see he's got it. She holds out a hand over Pucks back, gesturing that she'll take it from him, but as he reaches over to pass it to her, Puck reaches up and grabs his wrist. Sam freezes.

"Um, dude," Puck says. He gestures at the hat. "I know where you must have found this. Thanks for saving it for me. I went back to look for it later and figured the janitors had tossed it." He doesn't let go of Sam's arm, and Sam slowly sits on the table across from Quinn. Puck relaxes as he's surrounded on each side by the warmth of another body.

"Look," Quinn says, putting the box on her knee and removing the lid. I brought this for you. I tried to take it to your house. I realized that I've been getting all this stuff, and I was waiting for you to ask about it. But maybe I should have been offering. So here it is. I figure that maybe – if you want some of the pictures, we can share? Or I'll make copies of stuff for you? Shelby has been so great about pictures and letters."

She fishes out a picture of a cherubic baby, smiling widely. Quinn is crying and smiling simultaneously as she tells Puck, "This one? The letter said it was her first smile. You know why she's grinning like that? She just farted, like, the biggest fart ever! Shelby writes these stories, and that one just make me roll my eyes and think you'd appreciate that one."

They go through the box, one item after another, and the sun is low in the sky over the river when they finish. Quinn packs the box back up in silence and they sit for a long while.

"This sucks," Puck mutters. "It hurts so fucking bad. I didn't know it was going to hurt like this. I thought, yeah, _you_ would be all broken-hearted. But me? Nope. And now I've got this hole inside and nothing can fill it up."

Quinn stands up, stretches her back, and looks at him. "It does suck. It sucks hard, every single day. Even though I know she's happy and we did the right thing." She holds out her hand toward him. "Come on. I'll drive you home in your truck, and we'll talk to your mom about you making an appointment with the person at the agency that I talk to about why it sucks and how to not be pissed at the world about it.

As Puck stands up and shakes the kink from his neck, Quinn leans over to Sam, hands him her keys, and kisses him, softly, on the cheek. "Thank you so much," she whispers in his ear. "I need to go with him now, but I'll call you later." She starts off toward the parking lot, but Puck pauses.

"Tell Mr. Schue I'll be back tomorrow," he says to Sam. Looking down at his feet, he runs a hand over the back of his head as he adds, "And .. I don't know . . . tell everyone I'm trying to be less of an asshole, okay?"

Sam sits on the picnic table after they leave, long enough to watch the sun sink completely below the horizon. He wonders about his birthparents. He wonders if his birthfather was as broken up as Puck by his adoption. And Sam knows it's wrong, but he kind of hopes, at least a little, that the guy _was_ that wrecked, if it means that he meant as much to the man who gave him up.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Author note:

This was originally posted over at the Glee Angst Meme in response to this prompt:

_Giving up Beth really has made Puck incredibly depressed but no one seems to notice because they don't expect the "guy" to be as upset or more upset than the girl and Quinn seems to be doing okay. Puck has stepped up sleeping around and the trip to juvie all were really a cry for help. It's getting to the point where he's beginning to feel suicidal because he thinks no one cares. Cue maybe the new guy Sam catching on that something is wrong because he hasn't known Puck for long but these seem like symptoms of something.  
I'm not looking for Glee bashing but rather Sam helping them come to the realization that Puck really needs help. Not looking for a particular pairing but if there is I prefer Puck/Quinn or Puck/Finn. Maybe even Puck/Sam.  
Would prefer happy ending. Maybe it is an open adoption but Puck didn't realize that he could visit Beth and Shelby being more than happy with it. And just realizing he has friends._

This prompt really grabbed me. I _really_ hate it when pregnancy gets used as a plot point and then conveniently cleared up with either a miscarriage or adoption that lets the characters go blithely on their way with no real impact on their psyche. Miscarriage and adoption are both real losses, and it pisses me off when they're used as an easy out to a pregnancy drama. Having already written a probably overly graphic take on the miscarriage option last year (_Fates Turn Around in the Overtime_), the idea of looking at the other side, and from the other POV, got me writing in this fandom for the first time since last year.


End file.
